For anyone growing up in the UK in the Eighties, Margaret Thatcher’s voice was unforgettable. Proceedings in the House of Commons were not televised until 1989 and, until then, TV news had to make to with displaying pictures of Parliament and playing audio of the debates, which often consisted of Thatcher swatting away her opponents with her polished vowels.

That memorable voice, though, was the product of elocution lessons, which were part of a wider effort to make Thatcher more appealing. This was not the only illusion of the Conservative leader’s time in power.

One cannot question that when she became prime minister in 1979, Thatcher took over a country in a steep decline. The economy was tanking, inflation was rising, industrial relations were mired and a general post-colonial malaise had descended over the UK. Getting out of this mess was an immense challenge.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is a worried man these days. He has every right to be. An opinion poll earlier this month gave the Labour Party a 14-point lead over the Conservatives, the largest for Cameron’s rivals since 2002. The strains in his coalition with the Liberal Democrats are showing as the public questions his government’s austerity policies, welfare cuts and vapid initiatives, such as the Big Society. The UK economy is in its second recession in four years, the country’s longest slump since the 1930s. And, one of the UK’s largest banks, Barclays, has just been fined for trying to manipulate the Libor rate for inter-bank lending.

On Tuesday, Cameron set aside these worries and discussed with a House of Commons committee a completely different set of concerns, the most significant of which was what Britain would do if Greece were to exit the eurozone. “I would be prepared to do whatever it takes to keep our country safe, to keep our banking system strong, to keep our economy robust. At the end of the day, as prime minister, that is your first and foremost duty,” he told MPs from all parties.

Greece’s debt crisis has given people license to blame its inhabitants for all kinds of things, so it was heartening last week to hear a leading European politician say, “You can’t blame the Greeks.” The comment by Ed Miliband, the British Labour Party’s leader, was for domestic consumption, as part of an attack on his country’s Conservative government, rather than as an expression of support for his fellow socialists at PASOK. But it was a timely reminder that the Greek crisis is not taking place in a vacuum and that the country’s experiences and dilemmas are being replicated in other parts of the world.

“Your austerity rhetoric has led to the lowest levels of consumer confidence in history in this country,” Miliband told British Prime Minister David Cameron in Parliament after he revealed that the economy had grown by just 0.5 percent of gross domestic product during the first quarter of the year. “You’ve been prime minister for a year,” the Labour leader added. “You can’t blame the Greeks, you can’t blame the Bank of England, you can’t blame the last government, you can’t even blame the snow.”